Re/Search #11: Pranks

Rating:
Summary: "Changed my life" - cheesy but true
Review: A life-changing, perception-altering wonder! "Pranks!" is unlike anything I know. I discovered it by accident when I was working in a used bookstore, about 8 or 9 years ago. I was a teeneager just becoming aware of how repressed and stultifying suburbia was--and of the people over the decades who have tried to blast open our minds. Even so, I didn't quite know what to make of people like Joe Coleman, who geeked mice & blew himself up at performances (check out the photos, as well as the video "Mondo New York.") or Mal Sharpe & Jim Coyle, who tape-recorded some of the most absurd pranks ever. They walk into a pharmacy & ask the pharmacist for advice on home surgery! The pharmacist just freaks out after talking to them seriously for awhile--the whole transcript is here. Then there's Mark Pauline, with his Survival Research Laboratories (robots/machines he programs to destroy one another, often decorated with animal corpses) and the infamous Karen Finley. Of course there are the usual suspects--Tim Leary, Abbie Hoffman, Jello Biafra, plus a whole host of misfits, misanthropes, iconclasts, outcasts, and outlaws to round out this wildly in-depth work. Tons of pictures, millions of words. It really blew me wide open. I love this definition of pranks. They're exposing reality for the social construct it is, showing how easily people go along with it, how they adapt to even the most bizarre "set up" and often revealing the power structures that control our lives, and subvert them with not (only) political action, but humor, razor-sharp wit, sparkling, spiky intelligence--and a whole lot of balls. Absolutely worth every penny!

Rating:
Summary: Best book EVER! Change my life for the better.
Review: I love this book. I thought I was the only weirdo out there, but this book inspires me to be weirder. Great interviews with Dead Kennedy singer Jello Biafra, Abbie Hoffman and Henry Rollins. One of the few books I pick up weekly, even though I've read it from cover to cover many times. Still cracks me up.

Rating:
Summary: The NEW New Testament
Review: If I was stranded on a desert island I'd want to have something to keep myself busy, like a woman, a bag of pot, or perhaps even a book...like this one!

PRANKS! woke me up from a deep slumber...the first twenty years of my life. It's as if a demolition crew had a party in my brain.

This contemporary BIBLE is made up of a collection of interviews and essays by some of the nuttiest ontological anarchists to have ever walked the face of this daydream planet. Contributers include Boyd Rice, Abbie Hoffman, Frank Discussion, Jello Biafra, Timothy Leary, Paul Mavrides and tons more.

The subject of pranks is treated in a profound philosophical way. A prank can act as a rift through the fabric of reality and literally change a person's life and/or destroy anti-chaotic systems. Keep in mind that we are not talking about frat-boy pranks here.

I've never met a person who did not rant and rave after reading this book and the quotations at the back are worth the cover price alone.

Rating:
Summary: Best book EVER! Change my life for the better.
Review: Like all Re/Search stuff it can get a tad fawning and smug, but in this case it's deserved. The distinction between these kinds of pranks and the hand in warm water pranks is that a GOOD prank should make the person it was played on as excited as the person who played it.

Rating:
Summary: Worth it solely for the Rollins story
Review: Like all Re/Search stuff it can get a tad fawning and smug, but in this case it's deserved. The distinction between these kinds of pranks and the hand in warm water pranks is that a GOOD prank should make the person it was played on as excited as the person who played it.

Rating:
Summary: great interivews of people who chalenge our cultural norms
Review: This book interviews some of the late 20th century's greatest pranksters and conceptual artists. From Abby Hoffman to Henry rollins, the interviewees are sometimes funny, sometimes challenging but never boring. It is a must for anyone from Jesse Helms to Dave Foreman because it helps one see into the psyche of the people who are challenging our cultural perceptions of reality in art and practical jokes. Despite the publisher's retraction (which is probably a prank in itself), I say BUY THIS BOOK

Rating:
Summary: What Fun!
Review: What fun! This book is packed with great interviews with people who like to make trouble. All are amusing and all are inspiring. My personal favorites are the Henry Rollins and the Earth First! interviews. The Rollins interview makes me laugh just thinking about it, and the Earth First! interview is exciting to read. It makes me itch to go out and prank away. An excellent and informative read.